I am very excited to be leading a workshop titled Dissembling Nature as a part of Deptford Literature Festival – it’s going to be great, and I really encourage you to book tickets (to everything else, as well!). I’ve been passionate about nature poetry for ages, and this is an opportunity to unpack the genre and reinscribe it with non-normative bodies.
The domain of nature poetry is often seen as the possession of the pastoral and romantic poets – Wordsworth observing it as his own. This style of writing posits (white, non-disabled, cis, straight) man as lord of all he surveys.
How can we, as readers and writers, dissemble that methodology, to instead write about nature from a perspective that includes humanity as a part of nature, and explores the impact we have on it, as much as the impact it has on us?
From Joy Harjo to Mahmoud Darwish, Ernesto Cardenal to Joan Retallack, Natalie Diaz to Paul Monette, this workshop will explore non-normative nature poetry, climate change, and the role of the poet, to both explore other people’s work and create our own.
If you’re interested in nature, bodies, or climate change, you should consider coming!